At Wednesday’s town council meeting in Upper Darby, members approved plans for a one percent payroll tax in the township.

Council members voted 7-3 to introduce and promulgate the ordinance. Council members Matt Silva and Laura Wentz joined 3rd District Council member Brian Andruszko in voting against. Meaghan Wagner was absent.

Before the vote, council members heard a presentation from Gordon Mann, managing director of the consulting firm Public Financial Management, on the municipality’s financial situation and indicated that the administration believes an EIT is necessary. In recent weeks, officials throughout the municipality have held similar presentations to the public.

It is estimated that if nothing is done, the budget deficit would grow to over $16 million by 2027.

Mann said that over 90% of Pennsylvania municipalities already have an EIT and Upper Darby should implement it because the municipality should not rely solely on property taxes. Additionally, EIT revenue can increase as costs increase.

Mann said the property tax is levied at an amount that remains the same each year, while the EIT tax can increase as residents’ incomes increase, which he said is the case in all municipalities.

“The property tax largely only goes up when you change the tax rate,” Mann said. “(With) the earned income tax, revenues grow organically, on their own … People get pay raises or there are more employees or they get better jobs.”

Mann explained what the new tax means for citizens:

• If you are one of the 3,000 Upper Darby residents who work in the community, you pay more.

• If you are one of the 10,000 people who live in Upper Darby and work in a no-tax town, such as Haverford Township, you pay the 1% tax.

• For approximately 9,100 people who live in Upper Darby and work in a place that already has a 1% EIT tax, that tax would revert to Upper Darby.

• Two groups that will not be affected are those who live in Upper Darby and work in Philadelphia, and residents without income, such as retirees or active military personnel.

Mann said that more people in the community would not be affected by the tax than would actually be affected.

“Sailors on payday”?

Mann also raised the view that the municipality should simply adjust its budget. There may be cuts this year, but the same problem would exist next year as costs continue to rise.

He reviewed costs in Upper Darby: 75% of that is the cost of employees, including 134 police officers and 55 career firefighters. He compared that to other nearby communities that have far fewer police officers and mostly volunteer fire departments.

“Because we have more police officers and because we have to pay firefighters, the costs are higher,” Mann said. “Because we have higher costs, we have to cover them.”

He said if officials wanted to spend less overall in the coming years, this could only be achieved by cutting jobs.

Wentz asked him if the full $18 million the tax would raise would be enough to make up the deficit. He said that currently only half would be enough, and she made the motion to reduce the proposed EIT rate to half a percent.

Council Vice-President Andrew Hayman, who had tabled the motion for the regulation, rejected Wentz’s motion.

“$18 million is not necessary. They’re going to try. They’re going to create a new pot of gold. They’re going to squander it like the last pot of gold. That’s what I see,” Wentz said.

Andruszko said he was also against a tax because the state should not take money out of citizens’ pockets and he did not want to see them as a bribe box. He also said many citizens feared that the tax rate would be raised to 2% or more after the EIT was introduced.

“We should not behave like sailors on payday. We should behave like adults,” was Silva’s view on taxes.

Previous poor management?

Council President Hafiz Tunis Jr. supported the tax, saying decades of mismanagement had led to this point.

Tunis also announced that senior citizens would not be taxed.

Council member Marion Minick liked the idea of ​​income diversification and said the council could not “keep putting the matter off”.

“We are the sixth largest municipality in the state of Pennsylvania and we cannot rely on property taxes alone to generate revenue. We need to spread out,” Minick said. “I am in favor of the 1% EIT… we need to think about the future of Upper Darby.”

Wentz expressed concern that the tax would primarily affect those living at the poverty line and said it should be revenue neutral.

She acknowledged previous Republican administrations’ claims that they had invested millions in the emergency fund and blamed former Mayor Barbarann ​​Keffer for the shortages.

“It was only under the Keffer administration that that number continued to drop,” Wentz said. “It drove us into this.”

Other items

The council discussed a number of other issues during the meeting, including the consolidation of parking enforcement within the police department.

“This is the most efficient way to operate the park service. It helps professionalize operations, optimizes cooperation between police and the park service, and creates internal controls,” said CAO Crandall Jones when asking the council to approve the plan.

A local resident who opposes transferring park management to the police said she does not want police officers to work as traffic wardens.

“Let’s leave the police to their job,” said another resident.

The park plan was accepted.

The council also approved plans to re-tender more than $14 million in ARPA spending into capital reserves and then reallocate the money, which will be discussed at the Aug. 21 meeting.

Also reviewed was a resolution to authorize land development and river restoration of the Cobbs Creek Golf Course, which had been put on hold due to council members’ dissatisfaction with the removal of hundreds of trees on the Upper Darby portion of the property without township approval.

Bonnie Hallam, chair of the township’s environmental advisory board, said she was pleased with the developer’s plans and that the council had approved the resolution and exemptions.

Next on the agenda was nearly $1.7 million in federal spending under the Community Block Grant Funding Action Plan, including over $700,000 for Golf Road playground improvements, $175,000 for Collenbrook Farms preservation, $163,000 for sewer improvements, $175,000 for housing renovations, and $250,000 in funding for nonprofit organizations.

It was approved.

Speech time limits

Towards the start of the three-hour, 30-minute meeting, the Council also discussed a rule to limit the speaking time of Council members.

Tunis said he heard the desire for rules from both parties at the last meeting and was not trying to silence anyone, but he believed the plan was a way to make the meetings more coherent and productive.

He noted that other government organizations, such as Congress, have time limits on speaking time, and that the proposal would still allow Council members up to 10 minutes to speak on each topic.

“You have 10 minutes to talk about each topic,” Tunis said. “People can get more information out of it than if they just monologue and don’t know exactly what they’re talking about.”

He said the claim that he was trying to silence people was not true.

Second District Councilmember Jess Bransas expressed her view that further discussion should take place in committee before being placed on the agenda.

Silva called the resolution punitive and ridiculous.

“Do I need a stopwatch to make sure I don’t go over my time?” he asked.

Wentz also voiced criticism, saying many of the restrictions are part of Robert’s rules of procedure for conducting meetings.

“It’s restrictive,” Wentz said.

She pointed out that there were 14 regulations on the evening’s agenda, which meant that it would be too extensive to concentrate on one meeting. She also said that the council president had to assert himself with the administration to avoid having too many topics on the agenda.

This proposal was postponed until the meeting on 21 August.